Lambrecht successor: The next shot has to be right
Created: 01/15/2023 13:15
By: Sebastian Horsch
Christine Lambrecht on the left, Sebastian Horsch on the right © Uwe Meinhold/Imago/Klaus Haag (Montage:merkur.de)
SPD Defense Minister Lambrecht is planning her resignation.
Chancellor Scholz should not simply rely on the usual mechanisms for her successor, comments Sebastian Horsch.
Munich - Christine Lambrecht looks weak even with her strong decision.
The SPD politician deserves respect for the fact that she has apparently recognized that she cannot go any further at the head of the Defense Ministry.
But her resolve was pierced before she could announce it herself.
And so Lambrecht now looks on as a political undead as her successor is negotiated before she resigns.
Eva Högl, the SPD's military commissioner, took a position at the weekend with the demand for a lot more money for the Bundeswehr.
SPD boss and officer's son Lars Klingbeil is being traded, as is Olaf Scholz' most reliable men in the cabinet: Chancellor Wolfgang Schmidt and Minister of Social Affairs (and conscientious objector) Hubertus Heil.
Lambrecht as Minister of Defense: Follow an over-politicized political operation
But Scholz would do well not to simply follow the first impulses for a new appointment.
Because the fact that Lambrecht became a minister at all was the result of an overly politicized political establishment.
The party, party wing, gender, loyalties and poll numbers of the candidate, as well as the political calculations of the chancellor or the party leadership, primarily decide who gets a ministerial post today – if he or she also knows the subject, so much the better.
That doesn't work anymore.
In times when everyone can suddenly imagine that the Bundeswehr could actually be used to defend the country and not just to haul sandbags, Olaf Scholz can no longer afford a new problem in the ministerial post, which is already considered an ejection seat .
Or to stay with the metaphor: the next shot has to hit the mark.
